School Districts Know How to Confront Child Abandonment

SPRINGDALE — An unhappy child. A parent who fails to appear for meetings. A telephone call home.

School administrators are “trained to be very observant,” said Regina Stewman, principal at Sonora Elementary School, and those factors led staff members to become concerned recently that a student had been abandoned by her mother. In this case, it turned out not to be true. Still, the staff took the precautions they would have had the incident been a case of abandonment.

The girl said she spent the weekend with a friend, and asked to call her mother to find out where she was supposed to go after school, Stewman said. A school employee stayed with the student while she made the call, and what the girl said was cause for concern.

Stewman did not provide the girl’s age because of privacy concerns.

The employee, based on what she heard, came to believe the mother might not be at home or might have moved without her daughter, Stewman said. After questioning the girl, police were called.

The situation developed at the end of the school day and administrators wouldn’t allow the girl to go home with her friend, Stewman said.

“We had to act more quickly because kids were going home,” she said.

Administrators were concerned for the child because she had previously expressed unhappiness to her teacher, Stewman said. Her mother also had failed to appear at a couple of parent-teacher conferences.

“This was a child we were concerned about,” she said.

The student ultimately went with police, who called the girl’s house, according to Derek Hudson, public information officer for the Springdale Police Department. A man answered, telling police the mother was moving to Van Buren, but wanted her daughter to finish school in Springdale, Hudson said.

The mother picked up her daughter, Hudson said. The state’s Department of Human Services was contacted, but no one was arrested and a report was not filed.

The girl has not returned to school at Sonora, Stewman said.

The Springdale School District doesn’t have a written policy on how to deal with child abandonment, said Hartzell Jones, deputy superintendent for personnel. They have a general plan to follow if the situation occurs. Administrators first go to the child’s home to make sure no one is there, then contact police if they aren’t, he said.

“They take care of that child,” he said.

Administrators did not go to the girl’s home in the Sonora situation because they decided it would be more appropriate to leave that to police, Stewman said.

Child abandonment is not a common occurrence in Springdale, Jones said. He said there were no such instances during the last year.

Abandonment is not common in Rogers, either, where there are eight social workers, said Linda Haley, director of counseling for the Rogers School District.

“I’m glad it’s very rare,” she said. “Parents can’t just abandon their child, and for a young child that’s just unforgivable.”

Child abandonment also is rare in Bentonville and Fayetteville, according to social workers. Officials in Fayetteville gather as much information as possible on the matter before turning to police, said Ananda Rosa, lead social worker for the school district.

“We try to do all the investigating we can before jumping to conclusions,” she said.

If a child is abandoned and handed over to the Arkansas Department of Human Services, a representative speaks with the child, school officials, relatives and other pertinent people to assess the situation, said Beki Dunagan, assistant director of community services for the department.

An abandoned child can be placed with a relative, an emergency shelter or into foster care, said Cecil Blucker, director of children and family services for the department. Department representatives will try to keep the child in the same community they grew up in, Dunagan said.

“These are the community’s children,” she said.

Many cases of child abandonment are due to drug abuse and parents being arrested, said Blucker. While the effects of being abandoned vary depending on the child’s age, the most common effect is insecurity.